Rune

I meant in the grander socioeconomic scheme of things: any bozo in the belt with access to a drive can blow up, say, North America if he is feeling like it. And I know the show kind of implies the belters threaten to drop rocks every now and then, but it's not like anybody realizes they can just as well blow up any fixed installations, and they don't need the rocks in their first place, just the drives on their ships. Why do they cower in fear? Why do Earth and Mars require building more warships to maintain the power balance? They are in the ultimate MAD situation just using widespread civilian equipment. But still they tip their interplanetary missiles with nukes. However, I forgive them, because as I said this is space opera, and all the timelines are very compressed, with events happening all over the place witnessed by the same people. I just think a x10 on the travel timeline and limiting the drives to "standard" fusion-like performances would turn this into much harder sci-fi. I know that thrust gravity over long periods is a very cool concept, but is it worth the price? Because with it, everybody would have in their hands a pretty acceptable starship-drive-slash-ultimate-doomsday-weapon. Oh, and let it be known: you are both 100% correct on the implications for spaceship combat. Rune. The lesson here: mind your drive implications when story-building.

I never get tired of sharing with you guys what I've learned here. I should probably go about it in a more organized fashion, tough, 'cause even tough I think I repeat myself a lot, apparently this still bears reminding. Search posts made by me on this thread and you will quickly find some where I go into much further detail, including optimal mass ratios for fuel/engines/payload and such sciency things. Rune. One of this days, I'll write copy-paste a decent tutorial.

I totally didn't notice this thread! Well, it's always glad to find myself among such distinguished company. Mostly because I have been here since basically forever, but you know, one tries to give back some of what one gets, and I've gotten tons of good advice and ideas over the years. Yup, years. Quite a few of them, and still nowhere near tired. Rune. Always glad to see it appreciated.

Actually, the Roci has several decks on top of each other, connected with stairs which are quite obvious in a lot of scenes. And of course the cargo bay is down, under engineering, which should be pretty obvious some time on season 2/3. . The show makes a damned good effort to respect science... except in its basic premises, like the Epstein drive. The plume power in those things is totally torch-like, and they completely miss the implications: cheap torchships mean cheaper relativistic missiles, and then why the hell would you build nukes. Rune. Which is why this show is an amazing piece of space opera.

Aesthetically they are challenging to make interesting, yes, but they are free tankage... and finding where to pack more liquid fuel is the issue on this kind of designs (they get really long, really quick). In fact, if you are lacking dV, that's probably the thing to look for, more liquid fuel. As long as you have TWR >0.45 on the runway, you can make it to orbit. The ascent profile should be simple: hug the water until you reach 400m/s, then pitch up a tiny bit so you ascend relatively quickly but accelerating all the way, the limit should be your thermal resistance if drag is low enough. Then I hope you are packing a bit of oxi for a quick burst to sub-orbital velocities, and finish circularization on the nuke (which you light on as soon as the RAPIERs start giving out in airbreathing mode). Rune. You should get around ~1,300m/s (surface) on airbreathing, and run out of oxi somewhere above ~1,800m/s.

Hum. Great minds think alike? It's a good payload/engine combo. Rune. I'm still not happy with my single-RAPIER design, tough.

It is a hair-rising mission when you contemplate it, but not so much when you actually perform it. Remember that, in high orbits, you have all the time in the work to make corrections, one hour past apoapsis is essentially the same as apoapsis at Mun's height. And of course, drop a named quicksave every now and then! Now onto the actual questions. Drills only have to be touching the collision box to work. So basically, even the small drills can be made to work if they are close to the Klaw, as long as they go farther than it when extended, you are golden. Radiators, it depends. I they are the fixed kind, they will only cool the part they are attached to, and the parts attached to that one. So you would have to mount them in the same part that you mount the drills and converter (since the converter has no surface for you to attach stuff to). If they are the kind that unfolds like solar panels, though, it doesn't matter where they are placed, can be as far as you please, so much easier. Rune. Good luck and favorable windows!

...and then the potato bill block the sun in the orientation you have to do your burn in (because Murphy), and you'll swear in Hebrew. Myself, I always pack two or three big fuel cells on all my ISRU equipment, to power it through the shade. The tiny fraction of ore spent powering the whole thing is tiny. Don't mention conservation of energy . Also, the radiator bit is important: use the folding ones or learn how the fixed ones work, because they can't always pull heat from the parts you want them to (only parent and grandparent parts for the fixed radiators). Otherwise everything will run x100 slower because of the overheating. Rune. Wonky game thermodynamics FTW.

Basically what he said, but with a special emphasis here. See, this also happened to me: And not only does it take ages, sometimes in high orbits the acceleration is low enough that KSP just doesn't count it (especially when you are running the nuke at 1/3rd to keep it fed form ISRU, and it's giving you ~20kN). So this (and the fact that ISRU units now work much slower without engineers so you can no longer feed a nuke as you drill) is the reason that the for next one, I launched a chemical manned tug with enough internal tankage for a long-ish burn: As you can see, it's not that big either, but that's the efficient engineer in me that sees the potatoroid as a big fuel tank to stick an engine to. I figure the slightly lower Isp is a worthy price to pay for not dying of boredom (220kN, 10 times the thrust), and half of thousands of tons of fuel is still a lot of fuel. I'll just have to be efficient on my navigating and have kerbin's atmosphere and the Mun do most of my propulsion for me. Besides, mostly I want these things to build on them cool stuff! Oh, and a final note: to plan fancy (and efficient!) solar orbit rendezvouses, just plan to leave kerbin's SOI on exactly the same trajectory the asteroid is coming in, but reversed, and you will nail a pretty decent intercept every time, with plenty of time so tiny corrections have a huge impact on you kerbin encounter (i:e: steer into an aerobrake to drop your obit or a Munar flyby to fix your inclination, or ideally both at the same time). Rune. KIS/KAS is a must if you are going to mess with 'roids, IMO.

Actually, that is kind of an awesome name for it (cousin of a spatha and all that), so thanks! And that's not even counting the ones that didn't get a WiP name. Rune. The next one would be the Mk C. Suggestions for what it should be?

I figured with all my ranting al the time, I should probably build at least one SSTO that follows all my engineering rules and makes no compromise for aesthetics. And it actually didn't turn out so ugly! But of course the devil is in the details. >30mT to orbit, on just four RAPIERs, for about 33% payload fraction to orbit. TWR ~0.45, and it still is pretty damn quick to orbit, on account of a very streamlined shape. And the sweetest aerodynamics you could ask for, with a CoG that stays nailed in place the whole flight and very gentle and stable flying characteristics (there's some dihedral and other stability tricks, like the raised tail, and pretty much every tweakable has been exploited in some fashion, like making the elevons do double duty as airbrakes). Yup, this is my future example craft, I even got the screenies to show how to properly control a deorbit: Rune. Also, note the number on the name. Damn I've been at this long!

Totally worth the wait. Good to have you back! And yeah, that was a very awesome dogfight scene. Must have taken quite a bit to film! Rune. And you know where I am, if you need anything.

Mmm. The closet would be my Korolev, one Mammoth and a couple Vectors. That manages to lift ~50mT with a GLOW around 350mT (without payload), so around the same number (somewhere between 10 and 15%). Another example would be the Heinlein/Lackluster, but those use spikes and again, not very efficient, I design my chemical SSTOs mostly for looks, and high efficiency chemical SSTOs are all about choosing your tankage wisely, which leaves you very few esthetic choices. Anyhow, yeah, for a rocket, 14.5% sounds like a respectable number. If you want to go higher, you'd better go the airbreathing route. Rune. Also, bigger is better to get close to the theoretical maximum.

Tiny, tiny stuff. The latest I'm happy with barely has a propulsion system! Rune. I find them cute.

A tad outdated, but here, a challenge on the subject. If we didn't get to the theoretical maximum, we went damn close: Rune. TL;DR, depends on what you are talking about, my SSTOs routinely go over 30%.

That is seriously sexy. And, you know, my own 4-RAPIER model is only rated for roughly half the cargo, so darned efficient too! Rune. I would put a docking port on the back, tough.

I've traveled 33*2Π AUs around the sun, plus a few kms more since last night, in real life. As to my virtual travels, I try to be a stylish as I can (what good is it to do anything if you can't do it looking good?), but I am an engineer at heart, so stuff has to be beautiful through function. Something ain't truly finished until you can't take out anything more! That, and I play career exclusively (the same career save since 0.90), with the goal so taming the land as I go (build a reusable architecture so that I can revisit anywhere at any time without additional cost). I am also a big believer on KAS/KIS (have you seen those asteroid pics?), but that's pretty much the only mod I run which has an effect on actual gameplay. With all that in mind, the name of the game has been reusable single-stagers and modular payloads for a looong time. And since a picture is worth more than a thousand words, here you go, a long dissertation on what I actually do. Since I do everything with KAC and in the same save, I haven't really gotten that far... yet. There are expeditions on route to both Eeelo and Moho, among other places, though. Rune. Not bad for the first in-game year of the space program.

Previous page, in my post just before the one you quote (the one @Jarin was referring to in the paragraph I quoted). And no, I don't have a liquid fuel only bird at the moment, no. The closest thing would be the Espada, my longest-range bird (3.5km/s on LKO with six kerbals for a let's-get-to-lvl3-in-one-flight training mission), but that uses a bit of oxidizer to reach orbit efficiently, and then it uses the nuke for mileage. Much better that way. Rune. Gravity losses are another kind of drag.

That is very sciency of you. You'll get far in this game thinking that way! Yup, that is mighty important. But also mighty simple, these days: fly as close to the ground as you dare until you hit the magical 400m/s, the ascend as shallowly as you can without burning up (very low TWRs can't actually burn up, so you just leave SAS on and let it increase pitch on its own as kerbin curves under you). That is a big change from the days of the souposphere and the slow climb to 10,000m, but once you make it flying SSTOs is actually easier than rockets. Yeah, not exactly what I meant there. Engines now need very little in the way of intakes, so minimizing your intake area cuts into your overall cross-sectional area. Take the Spatha, for example (first pic, the one with four RAPIERs, a small bay, and 20mT+4 kerbals capacity). The four RAPIERs are attached to one precooler each, then the precoolers to each of the four nodes of the Mk3 engine mount (then I moved them around to make them look cool, which took a lot of finagling but is besides the point, you could do it better and easier with a quadcoupler). Long story short, I have four engines happily fed, and my cross section is a single Mk3 tank. If I wanted to do the same thing with one shock cone per RAPIER, I would have a cross section of one Mk3 tank, because of the bay... and four 1.25 tanks, one for each intake. So if you do use engine pods, just one shock cone for each two RAPIERs will be enough, and thus you can halve your frontal intake area. Never mind what I did on the Calymore, that was mostly aesthetic reasons. Rune. Precoolers FTW, basically, there's a reason they are in the final tech node.

I completely and heartily disagree. I launch way more SSTOs than anything else, since they are the cheapest way to put stuff in orbit in stock, reliably. Only when somethign doesn't fit the cargo bay of a Claymore do I consider slapping chemical rocket SSTOs to the sides. Granted, not easy at the level I do it, because I have been doing this basically forever. But building a Big Red SSTO is just a matter of knowing it takes about six RAPIERs, and following the rules I laid, and should be something anyone could do if their put their mind to it and seek some guidance when they hit snags. Here, some examples of incredibly useful SSTOs that take roughly 1/3rd their takeoff weight (usually quite a bit more) to orbit. Note that the Claymore is leaving that station after dropping about 45mT of ore fuel, some commsats, and a few other odds and ends: And just to show that there is another whole kind of SSTOs that people totally disregard (we should have been saying airbreathing SSTOs all along), this is nowhere as cheap, but still cheaper than a disposable rocket: Rune. Mostly what it takes is the desire to do it.

Which is something that has always weirded me out, since you are a veteran that understands that rocketry is all about ratios. Let me throw a few numbers to help you next time: A balanced RAPIER design has around 0.5-0.7 TWR (going by KER or the static thrust), and it is about equal parts payload (the payload could always be extra fuel and/or high Isp propulsion systems for extended range, of course), fuel for the ascent (around ~400kgs per RAPIER of LF for the airbreathing part, and the rest plain LFO), and everything else (engines, wings, cargo bay, control point, landing gear and miscellaneous systems like docking stuff). Other than that, build a sleek plane that looks awesome, and follow the right path to orbit. That last bit is important, RAPIERS are easy as dirt to fly, if you only remember to skim the surface until you get them into their operating speed. With the right TWR (~0.5) and a slight positive angle off the runway, you can actually manage an input-free ascent, just pushing buttons while SAS flies you to orbit. Rune. That last bit is kind of a pain in the ass to engineer, so something to strive for.

Well, I am one of those forum monsters, having played at this game for literal years, but I would still say SSTOing is not impossible for "newbies", if they ask a bit around and approach the subject with some scientific mindset and stamina. Basically, try to figure out what is going on and what the indicators mean, and be prepared for a lot of trial and error, and you can't go wrong! I know I had a bit of a leg up because of my studies, but I got into SSTOs fast. Hear hear! There is a lot of stuff to be said about SSTOs, but there are really only three things to have in mind under 1.2 rules: -The engine for SSTOing is the RAPIER. Accept no substitutes. Nukes are fine if you want to go farther, but nothing beats the payload fraction of a RAPIER design. RAPIER=easiest=most efficient (in stock). -The flight path for the engine is crucial. With a RAPIER, you basically want to do a straight line to orbit, pitching up/down only slightly, or not at all (10º over the horizon is climbing rapidly if your speed is 1,000m/s, and kerbin curves under you), and getting to ~400m/s near sea level, in order to "wake up" the engines. -Sleek, sleek, sleek. For a winged SSTO, drag is your single worst enemy. Things that create lots of drag: unused nodes, not-pointy parts sticking out of cargo bays, intakes. Have as few intakes as you can get away with, as few nosecones, and absolutely no uncapped nodes. Rune. The rest is just making a plane that flies and figuring fuel/payload ratios by trial and error.

Always glad to be of help. Did you manage to get the ejection seat working again? Rune. I spy struts in those gorgeous ships, tough. You don't yet know about the "autostrut" advanced tweakable, do you? Dragless and massless, FWIW.

I did a thing for a person. I'd say it looks almost as good as what he sent me to fix, but the flames make it kinda difficult to figure out, because she took 3.01 minutes flat to get to a 75km high apoapsis. Rune. The issue was how to get it to orbit. Now it's making orbit without burning up. Progress?

0.6 is a good one, permissive but close to the edge. The absolute minimum (and thus, the most efficient) is somewhere below 0.5, 0.45 or so, depending on how streamlined you are. And anything above ~0.7 will mean that you can burn yourself up during ascent a bit too easily for my taste. So yeah, 0.6 is a good number to shoot for, lets you miss either way and still come up with something good. The only precise way is to bring up the aero info in the right click menus through the cheat menu (ALT+F12, hunt for "enable aero data in action menus" or something like it), but the in-flight visualization tool (F12 to toggle) is a bit more intuitive (and certainly faster), with vectors and such. Mind you, don't trust it too much. The size of the vector is mainly a factor of their node size, so only compare very similar things, and in case of doubt break any ties with the hard numbers of the menu. Rune. Hope that helps!